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If you're a Facebook user and you are unhappy with the way the company strongarms, censors and manipulates its audience, the most effective way for you to expre

If you're a Facebook user and you are unhappy with the way the company strongarms, censors and manipulates its audience, the most effective way for you to express this dissatisfaction is to close your account, block social media bugs and encourage your friends and family to do the same. Facebook doesn't care how you feel when you use their service; their bottom line simply depends on your contribution to the statistics they use to sell ads. Apathy, or even outrage, are perfectly acceptable provided you express it through channels they control and profit from. As far as I'm concerned, as long as this conversation is couched in trying to appeal to Mark Zuckerberg's imagined sense of ethical responsibility it will lead nowhere.

hughperkins 10y ago
Thats not really true. I dont use facebook (i use wechat, never had anything censored, and the privacy controls are awesome), but i dont think facebook wakes up in the morning and thinks "why doesnt Hugh use facebook? We should make it more like wechat". If you want change, the most effective way to get it is to ask for it.
- ljk 10y ago
  > but i dont think facebook wakes up in the morning and thinks "why doesnt Hugh use facebook? If enough people stop using it then they might. It's all about profit for corporations.
red_admiral 10y ago
No. It's more effective to lobby your local member of parliament/congress to pass laws restricting what media organisations can or cannot do. Granted, by "more effective" I mean something like 0.1% instead of 0.01%, but it's worth a try.
- awinder 10y ago
  Why is Facebook a media outlet as opposed to, say, a private gathering place like a mall or movie theatre?
  - shabda 10y ago
    Because it is becoming the predominant way people consume media. If it were only used by 10% of its current use, it shouldn't be, but it current levels it should. As Stalin said "quantity has a quality all its own".
    - nine_k 10y ago
      Referencing Stalin in a media freedom context is, well, so liberal.
      - throwanem 10y ago
        Stalin was quoting Napoleon. I'm not sure where you're going with this.
  - paganel 10y ago
    Facebook has become a de-facto political "agora" for the politicians and high-Government officials from my country (I live in Eastern Europe). More exactly, that's where now they first express their views on current political, social and economics affairs affecting my country. Nowadays I would say that most of the important stuff first gets posted on FB, and only then it gets re-published by the local media (whatever it's left of it at this point). So, even if I would want to "get off" FB and decide to ignore it completely then I would just have an "inferior" experience as a citizen of my country, i.e. I would not have first-hand account on what's shaping the things around me. It's not that I like what Facebook has become, but there's nothing that I can do to change it at this point.
    - wyager 10y ago
      So once your platform gets popular enough, the government can tell you what to do with it? Why? It's not Facebook's fault that politicians started using it.
      - sitkack 10y ago
- briandear 10y ago
  That's a very dangerous path on which to travel. China passes some strong laws what media organizations can and can't do. Free speech isn't a right given by governments, but one cultivated and protected by the people. The marketplace solves these problems. Nobody is forced to use Facebook. If so many people care, perhaps they ought to vote with their dollar and seek alternatives. If they are unwilling to do that, it's on them and not the company that would support censorship. Don't like tacos? Don't buy tacos. The government ought not tell taco vendors they can't sell tacos but instead reduce regulation to make it easier for a pizza guy to start a business. Less regulation by definition, increased freedom.
  - jonathanstrange 10y ago
    How does the market solve the problem that it is morally wrong (or at least dubious) to delete an iconic picture that exemplifies the cruelties of the Vietnam War? Do you believe that billions of Facebook users will switch to another social network because they are some sort of moral saints who recognize Facebook's mistake and act accordingly? Or do you instead believe that the majority of Facebook users are that much of a moral authority that we should readily concede that Facebook is right, because almost none of their users complain? "the market solves this" is a funny meme, but it's often plain wrong. Markets can solve certain optimization problems and find price equilibria, but they cannot somehow magically solve the vexing moral question of how much (if at all) a social media company should censor their user's content and who should control this in which way.
  - ivan_gammel 10y ago
    It's not dangerous, it's the only path that society can choose. Facebook is dominant on social networking market and is subject to anti-trust regulations, that must be adopted to the nature of the service. Same can be said about Google in some countries. It's almost impossible today for a person to switch SN, because for this to happen it has to be a group decision - most of the contacts must do the same switch. I have accounts in Path, VK and few more "yet another" social networks, but they are useless without social graph and it's beyond my control to move this graph there. It has to be regulated, because having freedom of speech in hands of a single corporation is wrong.
- jMyles 10y ago
  It may be "more effective" to implore the government to crack down on media policies you don't like, but it's also as much a threat to free expression as Facebook's ridiculous and overt censorship of this image.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Free expression already has limits (No "Fire!" in a crowded theater when no danger exists), I'm absolutely fine with government saying what Facebook isn't allowed to do (remove journalistic posts without due process).
    - rrego 10y ago
      Yes free expression obviously does have limits; It probably doesn't have that silly "Fire in a theater" restriction. Holmes (the supreme court justice you are quoting) said this with respect to this case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States where they prosecuted Schenck for anti-war pamphlets. This is something that would be protected by the constitution today. This quote is a pretty lousy excuse for suppressing free expression considering Holmes's track record of dismissing free speech. With regards to Facebook removing posts, why should there be a "due process" for a (specific) company to remove posts. What sense does this make?
      - visarga 10y ago
        FB isn't just a specific company. FB has grown to such a size that it has become a large part of the media/press. So it has to be regulated like press.
        wonder_er 10y ago
        Er... press isn't supposed to be regulated. Unless that was your point? The first amendment says: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press... Where do you get that we should regulate the press? Obviously you could argue that the constitution is wrong, and that's fine with me. It's just a document, but when you say "it has to be regulated..." what is the mechanism you're referring to?
- wyager 10y ago
  While Facebook censorship policies are very annoying, I fully support their right to have complete discretion over what goes on their platform. I would rather punish them through voluntary market mechanisms than by using the government as a blunt instrument to force them to behave as I like.
- ricksplat 10y ago
  * > No. ... * He says as if the possessor of some absolute truth. The ignorant twit.
- alanwatts 10y ago
  >No. It's more effective to lobby your local member of parliament/congress to pass laws restricting what media organisations can or cannot do. No. Facebook has far more lobbying power ($) than any of us. There is a reason why you see the FB logo in the background of the presidential debates. Boycotting their service directly negates that power.
- Dirlewanger 10y ago
  Absolutely not. Government should have no say what a private entity can/can't do in their walled garden. The fact that over a billion people use it is a different issue.
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    Walled Garden can be monopoly or trust. Government regulates those things all the time
  - kefka 10y ago
    A private individual, sure. I'll accept that argument. But a corporation should have no such leeway. Companies exist for the mutual benefit of the citizens, and their shareholders. Just because we've lost that sense of ethic doesn't make it not true. Now, the predominant view is "A company can fuck over whomever they want, as long as it lies within the confines of the law", is preposterous. Public corporations are already required to be sociopathic, given the legal requirement of profit (exception given to benefit corps). Or in much more shallow words, "I'll believe corporations are people when they execute one in Texas."
    - Roboprog 10y ago
      People seem to lose sight of that: corporations are REQUIRED to be as ruthless as they can legally get away with, or they are literally in violation of the law in terms of making money for their owners. The law is the ONLY thing that curbs their bad behavior, other than publicity so bad that it (temporarily, until forgotten) causes a sales drop. Yeah, I'd like to see more corporate death sentences handed out, as well. It may or may not deter any other bad corps, but it would cut down on second offenses :-)
      - YuriNiyazov 10y ago
        This is false. There is no such law that requires nothing but ruthless profit optimization. I invite you to disprove my claim by pointing to a relevant piece of legislation.
- smsm42 10y ago
  If you measure everything purely by effect, there are more efficient ways of restricting media organizations from doing certain things. E.g., many news organizations avoided republishing the famous Muhammad cartoons, not because their parliaments were prohibiting it, but because they were afraid of violent retaliation. If you are OK with abandoning morals, you can be very efficient in preventing people from doing things. Mafia can be very efficient in preventing witnesses from talking, for example. Now, you can say, employing threat of government-mediated violence through congressional law is not the same as employing the threat of direct violence. But the only real difference I can see is that you can claim "it's all for common good". Oh, wait, they do the same too...
- jayess 10y ago
  For sure. A few dozen bureaucrats should be dictating what is and what isn't acceptable content and the punishment for not adhering to their sense of appropriateness.
justsaysmthng 10y ago
> is to close your account, block social media bugs and encourage your friends and family to do the same. Much easier said than done. First, there is no way to 'close' your account - you can only 'deactivate' it. I did it in July, but then I noticed that a lot of social activities - like concerts, festivals, parties, etc, are organised using Facebook so if you're not on it, you can't participate. This is very frustrating and wrong, but that's what the world does. I personally think that Facebook is breaking the Internet and we're just starting to see the first signs of the bad things to come out of it. Back to account 'deactivation' - if you log in to your deactivated account, Facebook conveniently 'reactivates' your account automatically, so you can't just log in to look at your data, which of course is not yours and is the currency which Facebook exchanges for real cash. Telling friends and family to do the same is useless - most don't care even for 1 second about 'privacy' or things like that. So 'closing' your account is more than just stopping to use a web application. It's a lifestyle choice - do you want to stay secluded, excluded from a lot of social activities and considered an 'introverted loner' or do you go with the flow and get trapped more and more into this social experiment ...
- thechowchowman 10y ago
  Your first statement is incorrect, you can delete your account, it takes 14 days to do. https://m.facebook.com/help/224562897555674?helpref=hc_fnav&refid=69 https://m.facebook.com/help/224562897555674?helpref=hc_fnav&...
- 2close4comfort 10y ago
  You can delete it there are what only 5 datacenters...finding your data and cleansing it should not be too hard just alittle repetative ;) But the more effective way to make Facebook listen is to hit them in the pocketbook. Keep your account use an ad-blocker if enough people did that long enough...
  - galdosdi 10y ago
    They'll still profit from additional ad revenue when other people, like your friends and family, view your posts and use facebook longer than they would have because they are interested in you and your life.
1_listerine_pls 10y ago
Nobody will close their accounts.
- nine_k 10y ago
  Not having a FB account may be unwise: an impersonator might take your name, if only to make fun of you before his/her/your classmates. Having an empty account, and actually not opening FB, may be a better way.
  - 1_listerine_pls 10y ago
    It's too useful to be ignored. Soon, interaction with businesses will be done through their platform. It's easier to set up a FB page with services + marketing included than to create a website.
    - lillesvin 10y ago
      I closed my account back in 2010-2011, and I haven't missed it the least. Only problem is that the board game group at work organize through a Facebook group, but we overcome that by talking to each other. If a company can only communicate with me through Facebook then it's probably not a company I want to communicate with in the first place.
jeremiep 10y ago
It would take hundred of thousands of people to make a dent in Facebook that way. Having a handful of people in the right committees will have a much, much bigger impact than years of dissatisfied users ever will. (Same goes for manifestations and every other mass movements)
- nine_k 10y ago
  Don't make a dent in Facebook. Make a change in your own life, and maybe lives of your friends. There is a number of large things that you might not like. The smallest effective thing you can do is to not be a part of such things, to prevent them from consuming your mental resources and from defining any bits of your agenda.
NumberCruncher 10y ago
All media companies censor and manipulate their audience. Facebook is a media company. So what did you expect?
elorant 10y ago
For many users, abandoning Facebook is like abandoning the web. So no matter what shit Facebook will pull they're not gonna leave, unless something better appears. From the other hand, this whole situation is a bit ludicrous. The journalist doesn't seem to understand how Facebook works and is directly attacking Zuckerberg like he explicitly asked to remove the picture. Come on guys, it's just an algorithm that detected nudity and decided to censor the pic. You can't write a rant like that and not understand how the damn thing works in the first place. It's poor journalism. And then you make the assumption that just because Mark has power he's using that power to manipulate the world. How the fuck is that objective reporting?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- blackoil 10y ago
  The picture was removed by moderators, not algorithm. So Yes even though Zuckerberg did not delete the picture, he is responsible for acts and policies of the company.
- ivan_gammel 10y ago
  Technically it's possible to have an index of all images published is some registered media and assume they are already vetted by editors of that media. Then you compare the published picture and voila - you do not have this problem at all. Of course, it adds some costs, but it's exactly what M.Zuckerberg can decide to spend money on (before delivering this service to people in Africa and other places where it's easy to abuse Facebook censor mechanisms - ask Russian opposition how Putin's media warriors take down their posts).
  - elorant 10y ago
    It’s not that simple. What about artistic nude for example? Would you allow a picture like the following, which could have appeared in dozens of art related magazines? https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Photography-vision/84309/2880890/view https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Photography-vision/84309/2880... I think that it’s much more safe to prohibit all nudity than nitpicking what to allow and what not. There are TBs of pictures uploaded daily on Facebook, it’s not a trivial task.
wslh 10y ago
> ...the most effective way for you to express this dissatisfaction is to close your account... I think the most effective way is to share the photo. I just share the The Guardian article with the photo.
- JadeNB 10y ago
  > I think the most effective way is to share the photo. I just share the The Guardian article with the photo. Let's imagine that we could mobilise everyone to take your course of action, or RodgerTheGreat's (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12462067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12462067). Do you really think that anyone in a position of power in Facebook is personally opposed to this photo, at least to the extent of feeling moved to change policy if it is shared a lot? (Also remember that, if they do feel so strongly about it, then Facebook has the power to remove it at will.) On the other hand, don't you think that everyone in a position of power at Facebook cares if they lose users, especially en masse?
  - wslh 10y ago
    I think this is a protest and if the protest is huge they will need to tolerate this photo even if it is against their policies.
yread 10y ago
I've just posted the picture https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/7fc6b8264e4c56cec514877c01fa9263efb4006d/0_293_3000_1800/master/3000.jpg?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=12c207e0ba1cea3c78e4c0e650fd5335 https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/7fc6b8264e4c56cec514877c01fa9... Perhaps facebook will do the closing for me
blackoil 10y ago
But, I'll need something else to replace it with. Even if we ignore the network effect, it will be owned by some other corporation whose policies I'll not agree with. A govt owned will be worse for simple reasons. Do we have truly free system which is open, easy to use and still safe enough to let a 13 year old to use it.
- krapp 10y ago
  >Do we have truly free system which is open, easy to use and still safe enough to let a 13 year old to use it. Of course not. "safe enough to let a 13 year old to use it" can only be accomplished through censorship. You can't have a truly free system that also respects cultural norms or legal authority - any system that does so isn't free.
mikeash 10y ago
There's no need to jump straight to closing your account. There's a wide range of escalating actions you can take when companies dissatisfy you. Going straight to firing a company every time there's a problem doesn't really help. Facebook absolutely cares how you feel when you use their service, because certain feelings are associated with less engagement (and thus less revenue) or people quitting the service. Expressing your dissatisfaction to them is a way to let them know that you're moving in that direction.
ramblenode 10y ago
Or change your profile picture to Napalm Girl and let Facebook close the account for you. I'm strongly considering it.
- mcguire 10y ago
  Je suis Norway?
alecco 10y ago
DNS hosts blocklist for all Facebook related trackers (you'd be surprised at how many there are) https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporations/facebook/all https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporatio...

hughperkins 10y ago

Thats not really true. I dont use facebook (i use wechat, never had anything censored, and the privacy controls are awesome), but i dont think facebook wakes up in the morning and thinks "why doesnt Hugh use facebook? We should make it more like wechat". If you want change, the most effective way to get it is to ask for it.

ljk 10y ago
> but i dont think facebook wakes up in the morning and thinks "why doesnt Hugh use facebook? If enough people stop using it then they might. It's all about profit for corporations.

red_admiral 10y ago

No. It's more effective to lobby your local member of parliament/congress to pass laws restricting what media organisations can or cannot do. Granted, by "more effective" I mean something like 0.1% instead of 0.01%, but it's worth a try.

awinder 10y ago
Why is Facebook a media outlet as opposed to, say, a private gathering place like a mall or movie theatre?
- shabda 10y ago
  Because it is becoming the predominant way people consume media. If it were only used by 10% of its current use, it shouldn't be, but it current levels it should. As Stalin said "quantity has a quality all its own".
  - nine_k 10y ago
    Referencing Stalin in a media freedom context is, well, so liberal.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      Stalin was quoting Napoleon. I'm not sure where you're going with this.
- paganel 10y ago
  Facebook has become a de-facto political "agora" for the politicians and high-Government officials from my country (I live in Eastern Europe). More exactly, that's where now they first express their views on current political, social and economics affairs affecting my country. Nowadays I would say that most of the important stuff first gets posted on FB, and only then it gets re-published by the local media (whatever it's left of it at this point). So, even if I would want to "get off" FB and decide to ignore it completely then I would just have an "inferior" experience as a citizen of my country, i.e. I would not have first-hand account on what's shaping the things around me. It's not that I like what Facebook has become, but there's nothing that I can do to change it at this point.
  - wyager 10y ago
    So once your platform gets popular enough, the government can tell you what to do with it? Why? It's not Facebook's fault that politicians started using it.
    - sitkack 10y ago
briandear 10y ago
That's a very dangerous path on which to travel. China passes some strong laws what media organizations can and can't do. Free speech isn't a right given by governments, but one cultivated and protected by the people. The marketplace solves these problems. Nobody is forced to use Facebook. If so many people care, perhaps they ought to vote with their dollar and seek alternatives. If they are unwilling to do that, it's on them and not the company that would support censorship. Don't like tacos? Don't buy tacos. The government ought not tell taco vendors they can't sell tacos but instead reduce regulation to make it easier for a pizza guy to start a business. Less regulation by definition, increased freedom.
- jonathanstrange 10y ago
  How does the market solve the problem that it is morally wrong (or at least dubious) to delete an iconic picture that exemplifies the cruelties of the Vietnam War? Do you believe that billions of Facebook users will switch to another social network because they are some sort of moral saints who recognize Facebook's mistake and act accordingly? Or do you instead believe that the majority of Facebook users are that much of a moral authority that we should readily concede that Facebook is right, because almost none of their users complain? "the market solves this" is a funny meme, but it's often plain wrong. Markets can solve certain optimization problems and find price equilibria, but they cannot somehow magically solve the vexing moral question of how much (if at all) a social media company should censor their user's content and who should control this in which way.
- ivan_gammel 10y ago
  It's not dangerous, it's the only path that society can choose. Facebook is dominant on social networking market and is subject to anti-trust regulations, that must be adopted to the nature of the service. Same can be said about Google in some countries. It's almost impossible today for a person to switch SN, because for this to happen it has to be a group decision - most of the contacts must do the same switch. I have accounts in Path, VK and few more "yet another" social networks, but they are useless without social graph and it's beyond my control to move this graph there. It has to be regulated, because having freedom of speech in hands of a single corporation is wrong.
jMyles 10y ago
It may be "more effective" to implore the government to crack down on media policies you don't like, but it's also as much a threat to free expression as Facebook's ridiculous and overt censorship of this image.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Free expression already has limits (No "Fire!" in a crowded theater when no danger exists), I'm absolutely fine with government saying what Facebook isn't allowed to do (remove journalistic posts without due process).
  - rrego 10y ago
    Yes free expression obviously does have limits; It probably doesn't have that silly "Fire in a theater" restriction. Holmes (the supreme court justice you are quoting) said this with respect to this case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States where they prosecuted Schenck for anti-war pamphlets. This is something that would be protected by the constitution today. This quote is a pretty lousy excuse for suppressing free expression considering Holmes's track record of dismissing free speech. With regards to Facebook removing posts, why should there be a "due process" for a (specific) company to remove posts. What sense does this make?
    - visarga 10y ago
      FB isn't just a specific company. FB has grown to such a size that it has become a large part of the media/press. So it has to be regulated like press.
      - wonder_er 10y ago
        Er... press isn't supposed to be regulated. Unless that was your point? The first amendment says: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press... Where do you get that we should regulate the press? Obviously you could argue that the constitution is wrong, and that's fine with me. It's just a document, but when you say "it has to be regulated..." what is the mechanism you're referring to?
wyager 10y ago
While Facebook censorship policies are very annoying, I fully support their right to have complete discretion over what goes on their platform. I would rather punish them through voluntary market mechanisms than by using the government as a blunt instrument to force them to behave as I like.
ricksplat 10y ago
* > No. ... * He says as if the possessor of some absolute truth. The ignorant twit.
alanwatts 10y ago
>No. It's more effective to lobby your local member of parliament/congress to pass laws restricting what media organisations can or cannot do. No. Facebook has far more lobbying power ($) than any of us. There is a reason why you see the FB logo in the background of the presidential debates. Boycotting their service directly negates that power.
Dirlewanger 10y ago
Absolutely not. Government should have no say what a private entity can/can't do in their walled garden. The fact that over a billion people use it is a different issue.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Walled Garden can be monopoly or trust. Government regulates those things all the time
- kefka 10y ago
  A private individual, sure. I'll accept that argument. But a corporation should have no such leeway. Companies exist for the mutual benefit of the citizens, and their shareholders. Just because we've lost that sense of ethic doesn't make it not true. Now, the predominant view is "A company can fuck over whomever they want, as long as it lies within the confines of the law", is preposterous. Public corporations are already required to be sociopathic, given the legal requirement of profit (exception given to benefit corps). Or in much more shallow words, "I'll believe corporations are people when they execute one in Texas."
  - Roboprog 10y ago
    People seem to lose sight of that: corporations are REQUIRED to be as ruthless as they can legally get away with, or they are literally in violation of the law in terms of making money for their owners. The law is the ONLY thing that curbs their bad behavior, other than publicity so bad that it (temporarily, until forgotten) causes a sales drop. Yeah, I'd like to see more corporate death sentences handed out, as well. It may or may not deter any other bad corps, but it would cut down on second offenses :-)
    - YuriNiyazov 10y ago
      This is false. There is no such law that requires nothing but ruthless profit optimization. I invite you to disprove my claim by pointing to a relevant piece of legislation.
smsm42 10y ago
If you measure everything purely by effect, there are more efficient ways of restricting media organizations from doing certain things. E.g., many news organizations avoided republishing the famous Muhammad cartoons, not because their parliaments were prohibiting it, but because they were afraid of violent retaliation. If you are OK with abandoning morals, you can be very efficient in preventing people from doing things. Mafia can be very efficient in preventing witnesses from talking, for example. Now, you can say, employing threat of government-mediated violence through congressional law is not the same as employing the threat of direct violence. But the only real difference I can see is that you can claim "it's all for common good". Oh, wait, they do the same too...
jayess 10y ago
For sure. A few dozen bureaucrats should be dictating what is and what isn't acceptable content and the punishment for not adhering to their sense of appropriateness.

justsaysmthng 10y ago

> is to close your account, block social media bugs and encourage your friends and family to do the same. Much easier said than done. First, there is no way to 'close' your account - you can only 'deactivate' it. I did it in July, but then I noticed that a lot of social activities - like concerts, festivals, parties, etc, are organised using Facebook so if you're not on it, you can't participate. This is very frustrating and wrong, but that's what the world does. I personally think that Facebook is breaking the Internet and we're just starting to see the first signs of the bad things to come out of it. Back to account 'deactivation' - if you log in to your deactivated account, Facebook conveniently 'reactivates' your account automatically, so you can't just log in to look at your data, which of course is not yours and is the currency which Facebook exchanges for real cash. Telling friends and family to do the same is useless - most don't care even for 1 second about 'privacy' or things like that. So 'closing' your account is more than just stopping to use a web application. It's a lifestyle choice - do you want to stay secluded, excluded from a lot of social activities and considered an 'introverted loner' or do you go with the flow and get trapped more and more into this social experiment ...

thechowchowman 10y ago
Your first statement is incorrect, you can delete your account, it takes 14 days to do. https://m.facebook.com/help/224562897555674?helpref=hc_fnav&refid=69 https://m.facebook.com/help/224562897555674?helpref=hc_fnav&...
2close4comfort 10y ago
You can delete it there are what only 5 datacenters...finding your data and cleansing it should not be too hard just alittle repetative ;) But the more effective way to make Facebook listen is to hit them in the pocketbook. Keep your account use an ad-blocker if enough people did that long enough...
- galdosdi 10y ago
  They'll still profit from additional ad revenue when other people, like your friends and family, view your posts and use facebook longer than they would have because they are interested in you and your life.

1_listerine_pls 10y ago

Nobody will close their accounts.

nine_k 10y ago
Not having a FB account may be unwise: an impersonator might take your name, if only to make fun of you before his/her/your classmates. Having an empty account, and actually not opening FB, may be a better way.
- 1_listerine_pls 10y ago
  It's too useful to be ignored. Soon, interaction with businesses will be done through their platform. It's easier to set up a FB page with services + marketing included than to create a website.
  - lillesvin 10y ago
    I closed my account back in 2010-2011, and I haven't missed it the least. Only problem is that the board game group at work organize through a Facebook group, but we overcome that by talking to each other. If a company can only communicate with me through Facebook then it's probably not a company I want to communicate with in the first place.

jeremiep 10y ago

It would take hundred of thousands of people to make a dent in Facebook that way. Having a handful of people in the right committees will have a much, much bigger impact than years of dissatisfied users ever will. (Same goes for manifestations and every other mass movements)

nine_k 10y ago
Don't make a dent in Facebook. Make a change in your own life, and maybe lives of your friends. There is a number of large things that you might not like. The smallest effective thing you can do is to not be a part of such things, to prevent them from consuming your mental resources and from defining any bits of your agenda.

NumberCruncher 10y ago

All media companies censor and manipulate their audience. Facebook is a media company. So what did you expect?

elorant 10y ago

For many users, abandoning Facebook is like abandoning the web. So no matter what shit Facebook will pull they're not gonna leave, unless something better appears. From the other hand, this whole situation is a bit ludicrous. The journalist doesn't seem to understand how Facebook works and is directly attacking Zuckerberg like he explicitly asked to remove the picture. Come on guys, it's just an algorithm that detected nudity and decided to censor the pic. You can't write a rant like that and not understand how the damn thing works in the first place. It's poor journalism. And then you make the assumption that just because Mark has power he's using that power to manipulate the world. How the fuck is that objective reporting?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
blackoil 10y ago
The picture was removed by moderators, not algorithm. So Yes even though Zuckerberg did not delete the picture, he is responsible for acts and policies of the company.
ivan_gammel 10y ago
Technically it's possible to have an index of all images published is some registered media and assume they are already vetted by editors of that media. Then you compare the published picture and voila - you do not have this problem at all. Of course, it adds some costs, but it's exactly what M.Zuckerberg can decide to spend money on (before delivering this service to people in Africa and other places where it's easy to abuse Facebook censor mechanisms - ask Russian opposition how Putin's media warriors take down their posts).
- elorant 10y ago
  It’s not that simple. What about artistic nude for example? Would you allow a picture like the following, which could have appeared in dozens of art related magazines? https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Photography-vision/84309/2880890/view https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Photography-vision/84309/2880... I think that it’s much more safe to prohibit all nudity than nitpicking what to allow and what not. There are TBs of pictures uploaded daily on Facebook, it’s not a trivial task.

wslh 10y ago

> ...the most effective way for you to express this dissatisfaction is to close your account... I think the most effective way is to share the photo. I just share the The Guardian article with the photo.

JadeNB 10y ago
> I think the most effective way is to share the photo. I just share the The Guardian article with the photo. Let's imagine that we could mobilise everyone to take your course of action, or RodgerTheGreat's (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12462067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12462067). Do you really think that anyone in a position of power in Facebook is personally opposed to this photo, at least to the extent of feeling moved to change policy if it is shared a lot? (Also remember that, if they do feel so strongly about it, then Facebook has the power to remove it at will.) On the other hand, don't you think that everyone in a position of power at Facebook cares if they lose users, especially en masse?
- wslh 10y ago
  I think this is a protest and if the protest is huge they will need to tolerate this photo even if it is against their policies.

yread 10y ago

I've just posted the picture https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/7fc6b8264e4c56cec514877c01fa9263efb4006d/0_293_3000_1800/master/3000.jpg?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=12c207e0ba1cea3c78e4c0e650fd5335 https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/7fc6b8264e4c56cec514877c01fa9... Perhaps facebook will do the closing for me

blackoil 10y ago

But, I'll need something else to replace it with. Even if we ignore the network effect, it will be owned by some other corporation whose policies I'll not agree with. A govt owned will be worse for simple reasons. Do we have truly free system which is open, easy to use and still safe enough to let a 13 year old to use it.

krapp 10y ago
>Do we have truly free system which is open, easy to use and still safe enough to let a 13 year old to use it. Of course not. "safe enough to let a 13 year old to use it" can only be accomplished through censorship. You can't have a truly free system that also respects cultural norms or legal authority - any system that does so isn't free.

mikeash 10y ago

There's no need to jump straight to closing your account. There's a wide range of escalating actions you can take when companies dissatisfy you. Going straight to firing a company every time there's a problem doesn't really help. Facebook absolutely cares how you feel when you use their service, because certain feelings are associated with less engagement (and thus less revenue) or people quitting the service. Expressing your dissatisfaction to them is a way to let them know that you're moving in that direction.

ramblenode 10y ago

Or change your profile picture to Napalm Girl and let Facebook close the account for you. I'm strongly considering it.

mcguire 10y ago
Je suis Norway?

alecco 10y ago

DNS hosts blocklist for all Facebook related trackers (you'd be surprised at how many there are) https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporations/facebook/all https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporatio...